Parkside Community College

at 30,000m (19 miles – the edge of space is 66 miles): a project with Cambridge University Spaceflight Its work as a specialist media arts college has been documented in a number of research studies by staff at the school. These include studies of an extensive primary school animation project (e.g. Burn and Parker, 2001), run in conjunction with the Cambridge Film Consortium, a group composed of Anglia Ruskin University, City Screen (an Arts cinema chain), the Cambridge Film Festival, and Parkside itself. A comprehensive account of the school's media work, giving examples of work in digital video, computer games, animation, and television drama, as well as work across the curriculum, is provided in Andrew Burn and James Durran's Media Literacy in Schools (2007). On 1 December 2008, the Nova 9 helium balloon took two space-suited teddies close to the edge of space from the grounds of Churchill College, Cambridge. The space suits were designed by 11- to 13-year-olds at the school. The journey took just over two hours. The teddies descended back to Earth and landed near Ipswich, being located by GPS equipment. ==Academic performance==

Parkside Community College achieves GCSE results that are consistently among the best for state schools in Cambridgeshire. ==Notable alumni==

• Cavetown, musician and YouTuber • Patrick O'Flynn, UK Independence Party MEP • Ben Thapa, opera singer • Ronald Searle, Cartoonist • Isamaya Ffrench, Make-up artist The author Nick Hornby was an English teacher at the school between 1982 and 1984. The UCL English professor and media theorist Andrew Burn (professor) taught English, Media and Drama at the school from 1986 to 2001. ==References==